- Effective Instructional Leaders: School/center leaders are strategically focused on children’s development and early achievement. They nurture trust, collective understanding, and responsibility for excellence and improvement among staff and families
- Collaborative Teachers: Teachers are committed to the school/center, build strong relationships with colleagues, and work together to continuously improve teaching and children’s learning
- Ambitious Instruction: Teachers and staff provide consistently engaging, effective, rigorous, and developmentally appropriate curriculum and instruction
- Supportive Environment: School/center is a physically and emotionally safe and engaging environment. Staff hold high expectations for children’s social-emotional and academic learning, coupled with nurturing, individualized support for children and families
- Involved Families: Staff develop strong, collaborative relationships with families and actively support their engagement with the program and children’s learning
The Start Early Essentials
Our professional development is rooted in an evidence-based framework of essential conditions that, when strong, most directly impact children’s long-term success. Our courses, tools, and processes are designed to build program strength in these key areas.
Developed in partnership with the University of Chicago, The Start Early Essentials can be measured in birth through pre-K programs through the lens of teacher and family perspectives — providing a targeted roadmap for program improvement.
The Start Early Essentials in Action
How do early childhood educators work with The Start Early Essentials to improve child outcomes? Take a look at the four stages of The Start Early Essentials in action.
- Start Early professional development starts by focusing on the leader as the catalyst for action within a program.
- We teach leaders how to leverage and facilitate evidence-based cycles of collaboration that help teams become stronger in the areas most critical for positive child outcomes. The more teams collaborate to solve problems of practice, the more they strengthen each of The Start Early Essentials…
- …and increase educator well-being at the same time. As this cyclical process becomes rooted in daily routines, the overall effectiveness of the early childhood program improves.
- And when each of these areas within a program thrive, children and families do too.
